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BACKGROUND
THE GREEN FLAME is a largely autobiographical account of a classified
Government program in which we were making boron-based fuels for use
in rockets and jet engines. My own involvement was from 1953 until a
few months after the project closed at the end of 1959. When I took
the job, I didn't know what I'd be working on or where. After all,
that was classified information which I had no "need to know."
The project cost more than a billion dollars in 1991 dollars, and some
of the fatal accidents that occurred were extremely personal to me.
Yet, I was so steeped in the mind-set of secrecy that I never considered
that the story could be publicly told until 1985, 25 years after it
ended. And by then I felt as if it absolutely had to be told. For one
thing, it is totally contrary to the scientific method to spend a major
amount of time and effort on a project and never reveal the full results
and conclusions. Even a paleolithic hunter would feel obliged to tell his
tribe where he had been and what he had seen. And those who died in the
effort had some right to have the circumstances of their death revealed.
The boron fuels had three nasty tendencies, (1) all of them were highly
toxic, requiring use of a gas mask for all hands-on operations, (2) most
of them were pyrophoric, igniting in a vigorous green flame on contact
with air, no spark required, and (3) they formed explosive mixtures with
certain other compounds. We lost two of our men and our plant at Malta,
NY, discovering one of those explosive combinations. After that, we built
our plants in the Niagara Falls, NY, area. The work force in the Niagara
Falls area grew to something on the order of 1,000 people and our company
represented about half of the manufacturing effort, the other half being
conducted at Callery, PA, Lawrence, KS, and Muskogee, OK, by Callery
Chemical Co. Many others were involved in research, using materials
provided by the manufacturing effort.
In case you're wondering, the gismo depicted on the dust jacket of The
Green Flame, as shown above, is a flare stack. A flare stack burns waste
gases being vented into the atmosphere, and the flame on this one was
frequently green due to the venting of boron hydrides.
One peculiarity of classified Government projects is that it can be hard to
tell whether the veil of secrecy has been lifted. Even though the project
had been dead 25 years and I was certain that the boron fuels would never
see their intended use in rockets or jet aircraft, I needed documentary
proof that the information had been declassified. After some digging, I
found that the U.S. Air Force had a roll of microfilmed boron fuels
documents that I could buy, and it was enough.
Finding a publisher for the book proved more difficult than I had expected.
(Unfortunately, that always seems to be the case with me. I must have a
bad case of chronic optimism.) One of my fears while writing the book was
that someone else might publish the story ahead of me. Thousands of people
had worked on the project and any one of them might also be writing it.
And yet, I had 85 rejections before someone suggested the American Chemical
Society as a publisher. That seemed like a long shot since the book wasn't
written as a scholarly text and even contained two chapters on the bachelor
life of the times. Still, the ACS accepted and I'll be forever grateful that
they did.
The ACS is a non-profit organization. They did an excellent job of presenting The Green Flame to
chemists and chemical engineers, but had no interest in pursuing a wider market, so it never
appeared in book stores. This was a disappointment to me since I had hoped that it would find a
public audience. (Actually, it has found a small public audience in that I still get 2 or 3 inquiries
per year about the boron fuels and the availability of the book. And I was the invited author of
the Boranes section of the Encyclopedia of 20th-Century Technology, Routledge, 2005, thanks to the
book.) I suspect that the conventional publishers considered it too technical for a
public audience. I feel certain that it isn't, but if you want to read the original book, you may
only find it as an interlibrary loan from your local library or as a second-hand purchase on an
internet bookstore such as Amazon.com. In the previous editions of this web site, I presented Chapters
1 through 13. In this edition, I'll provide a synopsis of what has gone before. However, that will
not be the last word. I have heard from many old boron fuels comrades over the years and have learned
that some of what I thought to be correct in 1991 was a teensy bit off the mark. So, now there will
be a postscript to set the record straight. As always, you may print out one copy for your own use,
but all rights are reserved and multiple copies or distribution are expressly prohibited.
THE GREEN FLAME
Synopsis of Chapters 1 through 13
Chapter 1 describes my transition from Army life back to the civilian world. So the new job was
near Schenectady rather than at Niagara Falls and I'd be working with stuff that was toxic,
spontaneously flammable, and potentially explosive. What a challenge! I had dropped into a whole
new world and was totally on my own. What a deal!
Chapter 2 deals with the day-to-day operations of the plant; the two most routinely miserable
jobs, the comic relief of horseplay, and how to get the best performance from the gas mask.
Chapter 3 describes the chemistry and hazards of making diborane. Each production batch combined
25 pounds of granular lithium hydride, slurried in diethyl ether, and 71.2 pounds of boron
trifluoride to produce 14.5 pounds of diborane and leave 81.6 pounds of lithium fluoride to be
recovered from the diethyl ether slurry.
This process doesn't produce diborane unless a small amount of diborane is added. The diborane
addition was known as a "spike." Failure of the initial spike sometimes created a very hazardous
situation in which a repeat spike late in the batch was akin to triggering a bomb.
Chapter 4 describes the pyrolysis process, in which a mixture of diborane and hydrogen gas is
very carefully heated to produce pentaborane, decaborane, and a boron hydride waste we called
'yellow solids.'
Chapter 5 describes an effort to alkylate diborane to improve its fuel characteristics. It also
describes the switch from kerosene to carbon tetrachloride as our equipment clean-out solvent.
Some strange events resulted from this, but were tragically misinterpreted.
Chapter 6 describes the bachelor life among a bunch of guys away from home, short of girl friends
and seeking things to do.
Chapter 7 describes the aftermath of the 6/21/55 Malta pilot plant explosion, the many ironies
involved, and the cause of the explosion. We were moved to Niagara Falls and given new
assignments in building larger plants.
Chapter 8 describes the pilot plant design & construction in Niagara Falls and the high
priority given to speed as opposed to cost-saving.
Chapter 9 describes the construction and start-up of the Company Owned Plant (COP plant), which
provided HEF-2 desperately needed for engine testing, lists all of the boron fuels plants, describes
the peak of optimism present at the cornerstone laying ceremony for the Air Force Plant on 7/9/57, the
new diborane production process at the Navy Plant,toxicity, accidents, and the Callery process.
Chapter 10 continues the Chapter 6 description of life among the young bachelors of the boron fuels
project. The Niagara River between Niagara Falls and Youngstown fascinated me. Most of us drank too
much and Karl's drinking probably was linked to his fatal swim in the Niagara. Then there was Explorer
Scout leadership, Atlantic-run salmon fishing, a trip to the Mardi Gras, and flying lessons to fill
the time. And, finally, the weddings that ended the bachelor times.
Chapter 11 describes the rapidly changing scene and many miseries involved in recovering decaborane. We
went from recovering minor amounts of decaborane from trivial sources to shipping 55-gallon drums of
high-purity crystalline decaborane powder to many customers. There were many worrisome incidents and one
fatal accident along the way, ending with the closing of our entire boron fuels project.
Chapter 12 describes the many uncertainties involved in government secrecy. Whether or not there was a
security man among our engineers. Whether or not there was a saboteur. Whether the project had been
declassified enough to write this book. How serious had the air force been about expanding the project?
Chapter 13 describes the closing of the project and the flurry of political hot air on the subject. The
fact that General Electric had developed a jet engine capable of meeting Air Force objectives without
boron fuels was the most politically comfortable. The fact that boric oxide is a combustion product of
the boron fuels and that this seriously fouls jet engine turbines and greatly reduces the thrust of a
rocket engine was given scant mention. I believe that boric oxide was the real reason and should have
been sufficient reason to end the project years earlier. The chapter ends with some 'war stories'about
other chemical industry accidents in Niagara Falls and some insight on doing business with the government.
End - THE GREEN FLAME as it was published in 1991
POSTSCRIPT - BITS & PIECES LEARNED SINCE 1991
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